127 Quotes About Institutions

It is preposterous to suppose that the people of one generation can lay down the best and only rules of government for all who are to come after them, and under unforeseen contingencies.

populists are not generally “against institutions,” and they are not destined to self-destruct once in power. They only oppose those institutions that, in their view, fail to produce the morally (as opposed to empirically) correct political outcomes. And that happens only when they are in opposition. Populists in power are fine with institutions—which is to say, their institutions.

Social and cultural change, however desirable, should not be effected by the engines of national power. Let us, through persuasion and education, seek to improve institutions we deem defective. But let us, in doing so, respect the orderly processes of the law. Any other course enthrones tyrants and dooms freedom.

Scaling national government up to the planet, creating a global government, was no solution. The puzzle of the neoliberal ­century was to find the right institutions to sustain the often strained balance between the economic world and the po­liti­cal world.

The way an institution works is that you go along with the prevailing fiction.

One has to dress up, as the uniform of various institutions of society, accordingly to the rules since that builds discipline; one can neither apply its choice nor ignore the rules. In this context, one may prefer this, and that term, which embraces failure, without objection. Similarly, one should understand one's society's rules and traditional and religious values; otherwise, one can domicile, where one's choices fit. It is clear that the minority is incapable, to surpass the majority.

The institution was a cross between an orphanage and a slaughterhouse. Worst of all, it was run entirely by norms. The word alone would set my chin trembling. I would beg and grieve and he would allow that I deserved another chance.

We are a generation which is crying loudly to tear down all structure in order to find freedom, and discovering, when order is demolished, that instead of freedom we have death.

There are great virtues in a conservative attitude towards structural features of government. The sudden abandonment of institutions is an act that reverberates in ways no one can predict and many come to regret.